*How the corrupt may be stopped

By Jide Ajani, Editor, Northern Operations
Security and anti-corruption agencies are now compiling dossiers on the candidates cleared by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to contest the April elections.

Also involved in the exercise are the National Drug Law and Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Related Offences Commission, ICPC.

But while the agencies cannot, under the existing law, directly disqualify candidates from contesting, they are free to make their findings available to the electorate for the purpose of stopping corrupt politicians.

Up to the 2007 elections, EFCC and the SSS were major players in the disqualification of some candidates. They were only stopped after the then Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar got a court verdict that said only candidates indicted by a court or a competent tribunal could be unjustly disqualified.

Saturday Vanguard gathered, for instance, that the EFCC is adopting a three pronged approach to ensure that corrupt individuals do not pass through its needle’s eye.

The Commission, according to sources, planning to raise public awareness about the past and present activities of some corrupt politicians and putting their records in the public domain.

The second stage is that political parties can leverage on such awareness to engage in self-censorship of its candidates.

The third is the deployment of such pieces of information by constituents in deciding the suitability of candidates for elective offices.

Nigerians, an EFCC source said, are “free to file applications and then use the charges already filed by the Commission in the courts against some individuals already parading themselves as candidates, to support such applications”.

This is where the activities of INEC conjoin with those of EFCC.

Mr. Kayode Idowu, Chief Press Secretary to INEC’s national chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega said: “part of the reasons why the names of candidates are being displayed at the constituency level is for the purpose of enabling constituents to take a critical look at the candidates that are prospecting for their votes.

“It is up to the constituents to file objections against candidates they think are not suitable to represent them.

“We at INEC do not have powers to disqualify any candidate”, he said.

However, a security source said: “some of the political parties may lose the bid to even contest.  Should some of the candidates who have cases hanging on their necks be eventually convicted, as they may truly be, the party would lose its participation in such elections”.

Already, there are many cases on-going regarding a plethora of candidates whose names have been presented by political parties for the April elections.